YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in late June, Your Mama discussed a trio of properties that were being bought, sold or flipped by former child actor turned mini real estate mogul Fred Savage. According to our ever faithful and always accurate tipster Lucy Spillerguts, the house located above Hollywood Boulevard that little Mister Savage and his wifey called home was purchased by actor Jason Biggs, who rose to fame as a lovable, sex-obsessed doofus dude in the teen sex comedy franchise American Pie.

Your Mama confesses that we never bothered to see American Pie, American Pie II, American Wedding, which was really American Pie III, or any of the other movies that feature Mister Biggs for that matter. It's not that we can't appreciate a mindless comedy. We can. But Your Mama simply refuses to pay 10 or 12 bucks to see some average looking dude stick his wing-wang in a pie when we can do that for free at one of the naughtier bars down in the East Village. Don't believe Your Mama? Well ask some of your more adventurous downtown New York friends about the once beloved and now shuttered Foxy, a seedy little bar on Avenue A where Your Mama and and our good pal Fiona Trambeau once watched a gal toss a salad in her hoo-ha. True story kids.

Anyhoo, after learning that Mister Biggs paid $2,249,000 to purchase the former Savage home, we got to wondering where he shacked up before. So naturally we consulted Lucy Spillerguts, our vast array of property records data bases and, the always interesting MLS. We learned that not only did Mister Biggs bed down in Beachwood Canyon, we discovered that his former home remains on the market with an asking price of $1,549,000.

Property records reveal that in May of 2003, no doubt flush with American Pie money, Mister Biggs paid $1,150,000 for this 1,930 square foot Country English-ish style house that happens to sit just down the hill and across the road from cinematographer Lance Acord's lovely for sale mid-century modern that Your Mama discussed a few weeks ago.

Listing information indicates that the uber-private property with a nice high hedge at the front includes 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, an additional office, a large vaulted living room (which doesn't look vaulted in the photo), a formal dining room, an updated vintage-styled kitchen, a family room/media room, natch, and out back lots of grassy areas and rock walled terraces that look over the canyon towards the glittery downtown skyline.

Clearly Mister Biggs has already decamped to his new digs on Hollywood Boulevard because this place has obviously been staged to within an inch of acceptability. This bland "decor," if the definition of "decor" stretches to encompass this sort of banal mess, has Your Mama reaching for a nerve pill and a strong gin and tonic to wash it down. Lawhd children, certainly a home can be staged better than this, right? It looks like some anal retentive mid-level manager lives here with his mousey mommy wifey who makes sure the carpet is always vacuumed, the children scrubbed, and there's hot meat on the table at 6pm.

Your Mama happens to like the kooky down to earth Beachwood Canyon area, and we like a house that provides the sort of privacy this one appears to offer. But we are concerned that it's quite a schlep with groceries from the driveway down to the house that is located at the bottom of a long, gently sloping stairway. If you're Jason Biggs, you just get your poorly paid assistant to hike back and forth. But if you're an average person with a weekly house cleaner who refuses to do your laundry or shine your shoes, well guess what? You get a work out by making several trips up an down the steps hauling in the groceries. Your might like that if you're one of those stereotypical Los Angeles health nuts who actually enjoys working out. But not so fine if you're Your Mama, who would rather sit on the sofa and eat candy than work a damn exercise machine.

We hear from several of our real estate sources in Los Angeles that the bottom and top end of the markets seem to be holding fine–unless you're in the San Fernando Valley where you can watch prices fall daily on the giddy blog May Fifth and Everything After. But we understand that these $1-2,000,000 properties are having a more difficult time finding buyers willing to cough up a not insignificant wad of cash for a so-so location with an ordinary looking house with shit brown paint that doesn't even have a damn swimming pool.

So Your Mama wishes Mister Biggs luck and grace in selling his former home at price that will still put a few extra pennies in his pocket. Fortunately he's got room to reduce the price if necessary and still make a couple hundred grand.

But before we head out to have our head shrunk, and we need it after discussing this house, Your Mama would like to offer Mister Biggs some unsolicited and unsophisticated career advice: Stop it with the teen sex romp movies. We know the pay is good–it bought you a two million dollar house after all–but if you keep doing these trashy movies you're never going to get out of playing roles that have you prematurely ejaculating on some poor actress who's hoping American Pie Six will be her big break. Okay now, we're through. Live well and prosper kids.

13 comments:

Mama I just wanted to point out one thing that I liked about the furniture and that is the two Thebes stools in the living room,originally made by Liberty's of London during the Arts and Crafts period of the late 19th century.They are reproductions of 3000 year old stools found in some pyramid in Egypt. Anyway I love them,always have,and just as a side note Granny Darling was in Egypt in the 1920s and partied with Howard Carter,the excavator of King Tut's mummy.That's about as close to royalty as our family gets children!

Mama, you're in fine form today. If only people could save themselves the error of their ways and just do as you say off the git go. Oh, well, save your breath. Yes, on that $12 theatre ticket. Unless I can go to a midweek matinee when no one else is about, I find the movie theatre experience nerve wracking . I'll wait for the DVD. Oh, I long for the days when the ushers would patrol with their flashlights, probing dark corners, shushing, and looking smart in their tassels and epaulettes. I've never heard of tossing a salad in your hoo-haw. I don't even like it when they prepare it tableside in a bowl.

So_Chic, I just found my old King Tut catalog of the national tour in 1977. I saw the exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago. I saw your chairs. http://touregypt.net/museum/stoolpage.htm

Everything was in glass vitrines and you could walk right up and be nose to glass. No velvet ropes. I was THIS close to that indescribable gold head mask. It was in it's own stand alone glass case viewable from all sides. I didn't know gold could be that color. All the artifacts were exquisite. The wood was perfection. The paint was unmarred. The room was utterly dark except for the spot lighting on the exhibits. I was transported. I can say it was the most transcendent art viewing experience I've ever had.

Oh, I hope you got to hear Granny Darling's stories of sipping drinks with Howard Carter. When we're young and the old people tell their stories, it's so boring. And then, poof, they're gone and we're that much poorer.

The only drawback to the house's 1920s vintage is the one-car garage. Fortunately, though, there's more than enough street frontage to expand.

As to American Pie, the phrase "one time at band camp..." still makes me laugh. Oh, and Aunt Mary, you should try the ArcLight cinema in Hollywood. Assigned seats, popcorn with real butter, ushers who announce before each show that they'll remain in the theater until they're sure sound quality is correct, etc. I don't think they wear the old-school uniforms, but it's pretty much an old-school experience. They were setting up for what looked like The Great Debaters premiere when I drove by earlier tonight.